Analysing complaint intentions in online shopping: the antecedents of justice and technology use and the mediator of customer satisfaction

Abstract

Complaint behaviours are the key to the competition in an online market when service quality is a major concern of consumers. An understanding of complaint intentions can provide insight into a negative service experience and in turn, effectively redress consumer's problems. It is our purpose to examine the determinants of complaint intentions in the online shopping. When online consumers essentially involve the purchase of products/services and the use of web-based technologies, two major issues particularly arise in this context, exchange behaviour and technology use. This study thus integrates justice perception and expectation–confirmation model (ECM) of information system continuance to understand customer satisfaction and in turn, complaint intentions. Data were collected for online consumers with negative service experiences. The results of testing the structural model indicated that distributive and interactional justices significantly contribute to customer satisfaction and complaint intentions, but procedural justice does not. ECM-based features, such as perceived usefulness, are all important in determining customer satisfaction and complaint intentions. The implications for managers and scholars are further discussed.